Overview

This year's fest will screen 18 features, 12 documentaries and more than 150 shorts over seven days at the historic Fine Arts Theatre (418 S. Michigan Ave.) at its seventh annual event. Legendary director, Alejandro Jodorowsky, will be in attendance to receive the annual Lifetime Achievement Award. The now-legendary Chilean director first captured the attentions of New York's late night set with his mystical surrealist parable, El Topo. Unfortunately, due to the graphic and often blasphemous nature of his work, most of Jodorowsky's films have seen limited release, at times drastically edited by the producers or distributors. Chicago UFF will present uncensored versions of three of the director's most notorious and rarely screened films, El Topo, Holy Mountain, and Santa Sangre, none of which are available on video.

For the second year in a row, CUFF will feature works partially funded by its annual Film Fund, including its opening and closing night films, Straightman by Chicago director Ben Berkowitz, and Superstarlet A.D. by underground maverick John Michael McCarthy. Additionally, filmmakers like McCarthy and Peter Hall (Delinquent) cite the festival as a creative ground zero for collaborations and future projects. Peter Hall has stated, "At CUFF I have communed with filmmakers I merely encountered at other festivals."

CUFF 2000 kicks off with the Midwest premiere of the Chicago-made Straightman. The first feature film to be completed with a grant from the Chicago Underground Film Fund, the film is an unfussy, refreshingly direct exploration of the friendship between two men when one of them comes out of the closet. Afterwards, award-winning audio experimentalist, DJ, and gender-bender Terry Thaemlitz will spin in the Fine Arts Ballroom at the fest's annual opening night party.

The World premiere of John Michael McCarthy's Superstarlet A.D. closes the festival. Another CUFF fund recipient, SSA.D. is a wild romp through the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the next millennium, packed with all the sex and violence of a classic exploitation film. "If McCarthy weren't so marginalized, many filmmakers could be modeling their work on his layered lyricism instead of Tarantino's canned vacousness." Said Lisa Allspector of the Chicago Reader after seeing McCarthy's The Sore Losers at CUFF in 1997.

Following the film is CUFF's closing night party and awards ceremony at the Empty Bottle, featuring performances by Competitor (helmed by filmmakers Stephanie Barber and Sarah Price) and the Demolition Doll Rods.

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Feature Films

Of the 18 features screening at the festival, two will be world premieres and several will be Midwest premieres. The lineup includes:

The World premiere of In the Dark (Chicago filmmaker Clifton Holmes' frightening DV feature is a cat and mouse game between a bored librarian and a mysterious game master.)

The World premiere of Fucked in the Face (CUFF 99's Best of Chicago winner Shawn Durr's first feature tracks one man's obsession with a serial killer and the overly sensitive, acutely insecure, compulsive clean-freak he ends up with instead.)

The Midwest premiere of Existo (Coke Sam's musical romp through an America where justice has been trampled under the wing-tips of the extreme right and moral questions have been reduced to bumper stickers.)

The Midwest premiere of Metal (a stripped-down, straightforward "hood" film and tribute to African-American working poor from Christopher E. Brown.)

Other Midwest premieres:

Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel

Rock Opera

Migrating Forms

Wired Angel

Junk

System Noise

Zona

Once and Future

Waiting

Slidin' Bright and Shiny World

Godass